


All Good Things (Come to an End)

by karrenia_rune



Category: Bryan Adams - Fandom, Summer of '69 (Song)
Genre: Dreams and hopes, F/M, Gift Fic, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-31 22:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10908579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: Set loosely in 1869 several years since the 'band' of kids from a small hick town from El-Paso, Texas lost touch with one another, each of them examines where they are now in their lives and what it was like when they were together, and where they are now.





	All Good Things (Come to an End)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Topaz_Eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/gifts).



Disclaimer: the song "Summer of 69' is by Bryan Adams and his record label, etc. It is not mine. Stanley who appears in Jody's section is my own creation.  
Notes: written for Topaz Eyes' request in the 2017 Juke Box exchange. 

"All Good Things (Come to an End) 

The dust is a reddish brown and gritty and it covered everything he could see in any direction one cared to look.

His platoon is currently camped in the foothills of some mountain range that he's forgotten the name of, and the moment he could not have cared a less.

It's hot, very hot.; especially at noon when the sun beats down like a relentless eye. It's hard to keep the dust out. He doesn't mind the heat, not really, early summer in El Paso, Texas could be just as hot.

The long uniform trench coat lies puddled on a magnificently unimportant of rock that when he settles upon it reminds him that it's a piece of the turning earth's bones. 

Since it seems they would be settled in for a good long spell it would be safe to take his beloved six-string out of its case. Unlike everything else in the immediate surroundings, including his troop-mates; who sometimes Bryan liked to call the Armadillios for their dun-colored trench-coats and almost but not quite hard-shelled dogged determination that they often resembled.

Bryan looked around to see if anyone was paying undue attention to him. No one was. He opened the case and took out his beloved guitar. Yeah, so carting the thing around was not exactly regulation, but he did not much care.

He'd purchased the six-string guitar at his local five-and-dime store; six, no make that seven years ago, when he'd been a tall awkward kid with a dream of forming a band with a bunch of his friends from school.  
He'd played the guitar until his fingers bleed, poured some antiseptic on them, wrapped them in bandages and then played on whenever and wherever he got a chance. 

 

It was a good thing that he'd possessed some natural talent, even if he'd had to say so himself. Back then he'd had a dream: which was a dream that he and his closest friends: Jody and Jimmy, and a guy to be named later would form a professional band and they'd become rich and famous.

It was a nice dream as dreams went, but somewhere along the way somehow the rest of the narrative simply did not wait for the rest of them to catch up with the heady rush of the events of the times that they lived in. Bryan grunted and carefully placed the guitar back inside its case.

The dust of the terrain, the days of marching from here to there, waiting out the Indian tribes who seemingly either did not particularly care to abide by so-called 'civilized forms of warfare, such as orderly dawn starting times for battles. 

He shook his head and wondered if they might their own rules about such things, but they just might just be too esoteric for mere white boys or grunts like him. Instead, as he fingers glide over the smooth casing of the guitar and those worn but well-loved and well-cared for strings Bryan's mind drifts back to the time before this war, this place to a time when things like war were things that happened to other people.

He closed his eyes and remembered how he'd been standing on the porch of Jody Tate and how she had leaned into him; remembered how she had smelled of home-made soap and jasmine and they had kissed. Oh, how they had kissed. They'd been unofficially dating, but then she had promised that she would wait forever.

Again, somewhere along the way it didn't work out. And when he sat and wool-gathered and looked back trying to figure out where exactly things had gone wrong, well, that summer seemed to last forever. That was in the Summer of June 15th, 1869.

Chapter 2 Jody Tate

Jody met the man who would become her future husband when the Ringling Brothers circus came to town. He was the illusionist and the master of ceremonies all rolled into one.

She saw it as her chance to get the hell out of a hick town where everyone assumed that she'd end up with either the valdecterion of their small highs school or the quarterback of the varsity football team.  
Neither of those two options was on her radar or even close to it. If anyone had bothered to ask her opinion on the matter she would have said that she had a preference for the outsider and geeky and the long odds.  
Which might have explained why she'd been attracted to the skinny kid with the big dreams. '

The first time they'd met she found him sitting up on the Red Rim Hill with a wicker basket full of still warm fried chicken, potato salad, apples and home-made cider. He'd been up there with a telescope a bunch of books on star-gazing and blankets .

Obviously all of this could not have been meant for just one person. Naturally, she could not let him think that he could infringe on her personal turf with impunity, nor could she let assume that she was one 'those' girls.< They'd argued, in the course of the argument after she'd accidentally given him a fat lip. She'd had a temper, growing up with five older brothers had a tendency to teach a girl how to hold her own, even if her accuracy left something to be desired.

After she helped him up Bryan explained that he had not meant to intrude on her turf; he didn't even know that it was hers. but if she wanted to stick around and look at stars with him, she was more than welcome.  
She did. And it was then that Jody Tate began to imagine, no, dare that there was a chance that she could get a taste of that big wide, wonderful world out there. Thinking back now, well, she thinks that if she'd had a choice, that summer would have lasted forever. Yeah, it could have lasted forever and ever. It was the best years of her life.

It was good, very good while it lasted, but again she should have let him down easy when Stanely stole her away, and with it a piece of her heart. 

She thought aloud, "Aint' no use complain, especially when you've got a job to do.' Man, we were killin' time. We were young and restless and it the hits keep on coming."  
She wondered, at this late remove if Bryan still thought about her, about their nascent band, and if he did, she thought. 'What does he think of me? I never wanted to hurt him, but sometimes dreaming about what you want isn't enough. sometimes you gotta make them happen.' That was back in the summer, the summer of June 1869.

 

3) Jimmy  
Jimmy ended up in another town, not far away from where he'd grown up and working in his father's accountant office and thought about heading out to Klondike range in the remove of Alaska where he'd heard about striking it rich in the gold mines. 

He thought if he left this place he would not end up like his father's father, a faded man in a faded, rumpled business suit who crunched numbers for a living and went home to a wife who was a better mother than a wife. Oh, don't get Jimmy wrong, he loved both parents it was just that his mother was the more vibrant of the two.

And had taught him a valuable life lesson that came back to him at odd and infrequent times and one that he had never forgotten. "No one is ever told what would have happened."  
"That's true, but if I had a choice, that summer, back in the summer of June 1869 would have lasted forever and ever. Yeah, those were the best days of my life."

**Author's Note:**

> It's set loosely around the time in United States history during the so-called Indian Wars, so using around 1869. I chose June as an arbitrary summer month, but it isn't necessary to know the actual historical context as I'm going with 1869, since you stated playing around with various iterations of '69' as a backdrop as it were. I hope it serves


End file.
